I had the worst day today….my throat hurts from yelling so loud at my children. I feel out of control, and my heart aches because my entire household was in an uproar this morning. The ongoing sibling rivalry between my oldest girls is getting out of hand. My little ones are starting to mimic and pick up all the negative tones and expressions. I am losing my patience and there is an unhappy vibe hovering over all of us. The sad thing is that besides the normal rivalry that happens between siblings, my children are treating each other with disrespect and it’s hurtful.
They have never been physical but the verbal comments seem just as painful, if not worse. Today Rain tried to run out of the house to get away from all the fighting. When I saw the fear in her eyes and the sad look on Shaya’s face I felt so bad. What do you do to control and minimize the fighting? I try taking away prize positions, grounding, expressing disappointment, separating them, nothing is working! Please help!
I totally let my older girls have it this morning before they left for school. I was beating myself up all morning about the way I handled myself, wondering if I am doing something wrong. Have I missed teaching them a particular lesson? Am I not teaching them to be kind and considerate?… and so on and so forth. I would have carried on with my worthless self-serving guilt trip, until I was floored at the luncheon I attended today.
The Variety Power of Women event really turned my day around. There I sat with my friend and MM partner Lisa, thinking of what a terrible mom I was today. A speaker was bitching about her incredibly awful day. We locked eyes as if to say, “I am also from the multi tasking, getting it all done, never doing it good enough tribe.” Then she began speaking about a mother in a third world country who was going through the same yet much worse scene of motherly life challenges (I won’t even get into the economic and environmental issues). As the afternoon progressed and I listened to the tragic reality of what people are experiencing around the globe, my trivial household drama diminished and I began to feel so lame that I was sitting there worrying and beating myself up about sibling BS. But, isn’t it crazy how talking to someone whose day is sucking also about your own sucky day somehow makes you feel better? That is the power of community healing, LOL! Today all my problems at home were squashed in comparison to the problems that were being discussed in the room.
We all have our battles to fight within our own homes, but I asked myself today if I am fighting the right ones. I need a different approach. Other people’s bigger problems made mine feel not so bad today, but in my stomach there is still an ache that I do not know how to fix. I am not naive to the reality that sisters fight, but I am intolerant to my family treating each other in an unkind way. I also acted terrible and it was a scary scene for all of us.
Any advice???
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